Fireworks through the ages: A Barry Shurlock feature

THE most stunning feature of St Peter’s Church, Titchfield, is the colourful marble and alabaster Tudor monument to Thomas Wriothesley, 1st Earl of Southampton, who died in 1550. He grew rich from the dissolution of the monasteries, including Hyde Abbey, and for centuries the family dominated the small town.

One of the acts attributed to them is damming Titchfield Haven and building a canal. Members of Titchfield History Society, however, dispute the facts – it’s not clear what was done, when, by whom or even why!

But false news has never got in the way of a good celebration, and so it was that for more than 130 years the Bonfire Boys and others ran a carnival and firework display that denigrated the earls for messing up their port – if ever they did.

It was a fun event in the cold nights of November, though few if any of the participants probably knew or cared why it was held. Despite its demise, the Titchfield Bonfire Boys Society is still active, enlivening the community with events such as the recent Annual Zombie Walk for Halloween, to “howl, creep or shuffle to the churchyard”.

Of course, bonfires in November are traditionally all about Guy (or Guido) Fawkes, who conspired with others to blow up the Houses of Parliament. They were Catholic recusants keen to remove Protestant James I from the throne and replace him with his Catholic daughter Princess Elizabeth Stuart.

In the early hours of November 5, 1605, the barrels of gunpowder were in place, Guy Fawkes was ready to light the fuse – what could possibly go wrong? That it did, led to the start of celebratory bonfires a year later, on November 5, with fireworks coming along in the 1650s.

What Guy Fawkes failed to do for the Catholic church, he achieved beyond dreams for the makers of fireworks, or ‘pyrotechnists’. However, it was a long time before the secrets of the art were written down. A Captain Jones had a go in the eighteenth century, but it was judged “absurb and impractical” by Thomas Kentish, who in 1878 did the job properly in The Pyrotechnist’s Treasury.

Still available in reprints and online, this remarkable ‘cook book’ contains detailed instructions based on 35 years’ experience of making fireworks. There’s such advice as: “Procure some inch French nails, or inch rivets; the former at the ironmonger’s; the latter at the grindery shops”, “to make touchpaper dissolve ½ ounce of nitre in ½ pint of hot water”, “rockets are charged in choked cases on a spindle”, “smear the end of the case with sash-tool dipped into meal paste” and much else.

By the turn of the century, fireworks had become big business, with a well-documented history. Less well recorded are local pyrotechnists, though a forthcoming article in the specialist magazine Fireworks by Michelle Fox-Rousell casts light on the Forder family of Winchester and their successors. Jan Church has also researched the subject.

The story starts in the 1830s, or earlier, when Thomas Forder, a native of Ropley, was making fireworks. By July 1833 the business was in full swing. The Salisbury and Winchester Journal reported: “On Thursday evening a grand display of Fireworks, got up by a young man named Forder, of this city, took place at the White Swan Bowling-Green [on the site of Marston Gate, Winchester], consisting of elegant fixed pieces; horizontal, vertical and Archimedian [sic], and other wheels in various coloured fires, changes, and reports; also rockets Bengal lights, mines, mortars, balloons etc, the whole of which showed great taste.”

A poster of 1856 shows “a grand display of fireworks, by Mr Forder, [and] a novel scene of A Balloon Race” to celebrate the end of the Crimean War. And in1863 when the city celebrated the wedding of Prince Albert, the future Edward VII, and Princess Alexandra of Denmark, there was a show by “Mr Forder” that “gave satisfaction”, though the rockets fired from St Giles’ Hill - not supplied by him – were “without exception a complete failure”.

The 1861 census gives a snapshot of the Forder family in Water Lane, Winchester, with Thomas and a son John listed as “pyrotechnist”. Another son, Edward, was an apprentice carpenter, though he too later joined the business.

In 1869, Winchester’s Society of Natives asked the business to help with a firework display to mark its 200th anniversary. And in the same year “Messrs J.H and E Forder” – probably the two sons of Thomas – advertised a grand display of fireworks at Banister Park, Southampton. It included a re-enactment of “the Siege and Storming of Badajoz”, an extremely bloody conflict in 1812 between Wellington and the French, which the British won.

The Forders had obviously found a place in the market, and further afield than Winchester. On Coronation Day in 1871 “pleasure seekers” in Portsmouth were exhorted to get along to a firework display by “Messrs Forder of Winchester and Baker & Sons, London”.

But in the same year there was a catastrophic accident which resulted in the death of John Forder and an assistant, Frederick Gillman. A coroner’s report noted that Forder came from a “family [which] has successfully carried on the business for upwards of 40 years without any mishap”.

It was the end for the Forders. The business was sold, but the new owner could hardly have had a worse start, for in the first year “the laboratory of Mr G.T. Cox, pyrotechnist” on “St Giles’ Hill” was completely destroyed in an explosion.

Worse than that, Jan Church has discovered that two people died, William Gillman, a teenager whose father had died the previous year, and 42-year-old William Andrews, whilst Cox’s young son William was injured but survived.

Events such as these ushered in the Explosives Act 1875, which made proper arrangements for the registration of firework makers and storage of materials. As for Cox, he kept on the business in Parchment Street until 1886, when he informed his “numerous patrons that in consequence of the great increase in the other departments of his business, he had disposed his FIREWORKS to Mr W. CHALKLEY”.

William Chalkley was a man of many parts, especially as a taxidermist, much involved with the early years of Winchester City Museum. He was an agent for Brocks Crystal Palace Fireworks and his shop at 24 The Square was a must-visit destination for fly fishermen in search of tackle and talk.

There are many records of firework displays and the licences required by pyrotechnists in the Hampshire Record Office. They took place almost everywhere – in Andover, Upton, Lockerley, Milford, Emsworth, Aldershot, Eastleigh, New Milton, Botley and so on.

When the 14th baronet, Sir Anthony Tichborne and his bride returned to Tichborne village in 1936 they were greeted by fireworks, and the Freedom From Hunger Campaign in Andover in 1962 was similarly celebrated. A huge amount of footage in the Wessex Film and Sound Archive at the HRO tells the story of Pains, based in Whiteparish, Wiltshire, one of the oldest firework companies in the country. It is even claimed that its founder, John Pain, supplied materials for the Gunpowder Plot.

Although the bonfire carnival at Titchfield has gone, the Winchester Round Table Bonfire and Fireworks celebration goes from strength to strength, in aid of charity (www.justgiving.com/fundraising/winchester round-table). The next show in North Walls Recreation Ground is next Saturday, November 6, and will be visible over a large area.

For more on Hampshire, visit: www.hampshirearchivestrust.co.uk, and www.hantsfieldclub.org.uk.

barryshurlock@gmail.com